Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy: Guidelines for Equitable Theory and Practice

by Teresa McDowell, Carmen Knudson-Martin, J. Maria Bermudez

Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy , 2nd edition, is a fully updated and essential textbook that addresses the need for marriage and family therapists to engage in socially responsible practice by infusing diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout theory and clinical practice. Written accessibly by leaders in the field, this new edition explores why sociocultural attunement and equity matter, providing students and clinicians with integrative, equity-based family therapy guidelines and case illustrations that clinicians can apply to their practice. The authors integrate principles of societal context, power, and equity into the core concepts and practice of ten major family therapy models, such as structural family therapy, narrative family therapy, and Bowen family systems, with this new edition including a chapter on socio-emotional relationship therapy. Paying close attention to the "how to’s" of change processes, updates include the use of more diverse voices that describe the creative application of this framework, the use of reflexive questions that can be used in class, and further content on supervision. It shows how the authors have moved their thinking forward, such as in clinical thinking, change, and ethics infused in everyday practice from a third order perspective, and the limits and applicability of SCAFT as a transtheoretical, transnational approach. Fitting COAMFTE, CACREP, APA, and CSWE requirements for social justice and cultural diversity, this new edition is revised to include current cultural and societal changes, such as Black Lives Matter, other social movements, and environmental justice. It is an essential textbook for students of marriage, couple, and family therapy and important reading for family therapists, supervisors, counselors, and any practitioner wanting to apply a critical consciousness to their work.

Genres: Mental Health, Grad School

396 pages, Hardcover

Published September 28, 2022

Reviews

[Lilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is gold. This is what I’ve been craving as a MFT grad student. This is EXACTLY why I become a MFT/systems orientated therapist.

A few favorite takeaways:

- MFTs look at mental health as interconnected internal, relational (relationships, attachment), and physical (social discourses, larger societal systems, environment, space occupied)

- Families are worse off when there are unjust power dynamics present in the family system

- Attunement means being at one with others, bearing witness to people's stories, and guiding someone making meaning of their social experience

- Situating problems in the context of who the patient is and the inequitable societal ideologies and structures that produce problems then help them translate the awareness into new relational ways of being with themselves and others

- As a therapist we will always be on the way - know your thoughts and ideas will change at any given point. Be reflexive